Pokemon GO was extremely popular right off the bat thanks to the popularity of the Nintendo Pokemon game. But the AR feature also makes it fun to play as users search for Pokemon hiding right by their home, or in the neighborhood playground. Wherever the Pokemon trainer is, all he needs to do is whip out his phone to search out Pokemon and try to catch them. Thanks to previous user-sourced mapping that game developer Niantic had from its Ingress game, Pokemon GO became the most popular location-based game.
While we don't see Pokemon GO players roaming the street anymore like we did ...Read more ...

Web giant Google has officially opened the floodgates of mobile AR gaming by allowing game developers to use data from its Google Maps service to create games that take place in the real world, or a fantasy reflection of it. To make things even easier for developers, the data set is available in Unity format, with real-world buildings and landmarks rendered on Unity-friendly maps as in-game objects. Location-based AR gaming a la Pokemon GO is the first use case to leap to mind, but crafting an incredibly detailed and realistic game world for any purpose can be daunting, and Google is...Read more ...

While the world still waits to play Fortnite on mobile, Epic Games is going around talking about how they made the Battle Royale mode work on top of the existing Save the World architecture. In case you don't know, Fortnite initially started out as a cooperative PvE game with building elements, where players worked together to fight off the Storm and zombie hordes. However, the company wound up adding in a Battle Royale mode, and it quickly became one of the most popular games on the planet. Epic's Eric Williamson says:
We wanted to create Battle Royale in a relatively quick timeframe. One...Read more ...

Game developers are going to be using Google Maps for a long, long time.
One of the big things that makes the Niantic games special is the way you go out into the real world to do things. Ingress and Pokémon Go both involve a heavy amount of roaming the space around you, naturally encouraging you to meet up with friends, and generally being more active. The secret ingredient to all of that is the map, which both Ingress and Pokémon Go heavily rely on to function. A lot of this data came initially from Niantic's old parent company, Google. Over time, Niantic was able to refine some of the...Read more ...

Pokemon Go took the world by storm, but it wasn't everyone's cup of tea. After some time, only hardcore Pokemon fans kept their step count up as they looked for new monsters. But what if you took the core gameplay that Niantic developed, only this time added dinosaurs to hunt down instead? How about ghosts? Digimon? What movie or game world, integrated with the real world, would get you exploring your neighborhood? We may be about to find out. In an announcement today, Google said that it's made the Google Maps API and ARCore available to game development partners. Devs will gain access to...Read more ...

In retrospect, Pokémon Go in 2016 popularized the trend of real-world mobile games that are now intersecting with the augmented reality push on both Android and iOS. Google is now capitalizing on this wave by opening up the real-time updates and location data already found in Maps to game developers.
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